Casa Guidi

It was built for a prominent Florentine family, the Ridolfi di Piazza, whose coat of arms - a coronet and crossed palms - can be seen on the corner house of the Palazzo. In the 1840s the palazzo Guidi was divided into apartments and in July 1847, one of the two furnished apartments on the piano nobile was rented by the Brownings, initially for three months, with all its splendid Guidi furniture. A year later, in May, the Brownings rented the same rooms, unfurnished, at 25 guineas a year and spent some time buying furniture, having curtains made and generally setting up home. Their son, Pen, was born in 1849 and grew up here, learning to play the piano which was moved into the dining room, and keeping rabbits on the terrace outside.

Although the Brownings spent some time away from Casa Guidi, when they visited England, Paris, Siena or Rome, this was undoubtedly their happy family home. When Elizabeth Browning died in 1861, Robert commissioned a painting of the drawing room by George Mignaty, as the literary sanctum in which she worked. After Elizabeth’s death, Robert left Casa Guidi and eventually died in Venice in 1889.

It was Pen Browning’s greatest wish that Casa Guidi should be recreated in his parents’ memory but this did not begin to happen until 1971, when most of the apartment was purchased by the Browning Institute of New York. The Institute, which was founded to “encourage and develop the study of literature and the liberal arts, with particular emphasis on the writings and lives of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning”, began the restoration process, opening it to visitors and arranging lectures and exhibitions. The Institute also restored the decoration of the drawing room and the bedroom as closely as possible to that which existed during the Browning’s occupation.

The transfer to Eton was completed in January 1992 and, after much careful planning and considerable research, the apartment was furnished as closely as possible to the original described by the Mignaty painting, family letters and the 1913 sale catalogue of Pen Browning’s possessions. The furnishings include Pen Browning’s desk, chest of drawers and two chairs, busts of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, copies of the Mignaty painting, the painting of St Jerome and the portrait of Pen, the original drawing room mirror, a copy of a bronze plaque featuring the head of Aeschilus, the brocade curtains which match as nearly as possible those described in Elizabeth’s letters and other Brownings’ belongings.

The restoration of Casa Guidi was completed in 1995. The principal rooms are open to visitors on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, 3-6 pm, from April to November.